


You Know the Tune So the Words Don't Matter

by indevan



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Getting Back Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22701916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: He wasn’t sure what he was, when he opened the door.  An old friend coming for a visit?  An unwanted pest?  He didn’t know what he meant to Caspar for the first time in their nearly two decades of knowing each other
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring
Comments: 10
Kudos: 95





	You Know the Tune So the Words Don't Matter

Linhardt let himself in the apartment, even though he knew he wasn’t supposed to. He could justify it to himself that he was just returning the key that was no longer his. If he wanted to argue (with himself or with who waited for him inside), he could say that he had been given the key before they had gotten together and so there was no eason for him not to have it now. It was why he hadn’t given it up yet and Caspar hadn’t asked. But it made for an easy excuse.

He wasn’t sure what he was, when he opened the door. An old friend coming for a visit? An unwanted pest? He didn’t know what he meant to Caspar for the first time in their nearly two decades of knowing each other.

Before, it was easy. They were friends--Linhardt’s first friend. The kids in his neighborhood thought he was weird and he thought they were boring. It had angered him, distantly, that  _ they _ rejected  _ him, _ going so far as to look for ways to avoid him. But not Caspar. When his family moved to the end of his street, he had a friend. One for life, he’d thought. Their differences only made them closer and blurred with their eventual similarities due to time spent together.

Now, he had no idea.

Someone was in the shower when he stepped in and he wondered why he was here. The key in his hand felt hot, the little smiling frog keychain dangling from it suddenly judgmental. He hoped it wasn’t Ashe in the shower. The apartment had one bathroom, after all. He didn’t know why Ashe would be home, though. The restaurant he and Dedue had opened together was open for lunch. He would be there, right?

One of their cats came out from the slightly ajar bedroom door and looked at Linhardt curiously.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said.

It probably wasn’t Ashe in the shower.

Caspar.

Vapor around him glistening as he tilted his head back to wash the shampoo from his hair. His loud, offkey singing drowned out by the spray of the shower head. He still felt something with him stir. Part of him could still be foolish, but then, why was he here?

He didn’t think Caspar was mad at him. At least, not anymore, but he still shouldn’t have let himself in.

A second cat came out of the bedroom and jumped on the couch. It kneaded its paws into the cushion, eyeing him warily. Linhardt felt bad for not bothering to remember their names. Caspar had brought that up when he had argued with him, eyes full of tears and voice catching. How he never even bothered with that.

He had been so angry and Linhardt hadn’t been able to react. He had later, under the piles of blankets in his room, when he realized it was really over. That he had done it himself.

The shower turned off.

Still he didn’t move. He was rooted in the spot, hand wrapped around the apartment key that shouldn’t have been his anymore. A third cat came out of the entryway to the kitchen and began rolling on the floor. The first cat walked towards the closed bathroom door, its tail curled above it in a question mark shape. It rose up on its haunches to paw at the doorknob.

Linhardt pictured Caspar getting out of the shower, wiping the mirror from where it fogged up with his hand, even though he had told him so many times that it caused streaks. With the water off, he could hear him singing. Linhardt recognized it. They always had similar taste in music. Caspar had bought his car himself and it was older, with a tape deck. He and Linhardt had spent so many weekends in old record stores and thrift stores, digging through the bins of old tapes. Their friends always joke about them only listening to music from before 1990. Their tastes were more similar than different, but Caspar had always teased him about his love for the Cocteau Twins just Linhardt did for him and his obsession with old country singers like Johnny Cash.

The song he was singing was similar to that, but it was actually recent. He had actually played the album for Linhardt on his phone, holding it up because neither of their cars had adaptors to plug an aux cord into. It was something he hadn’t teased him about, because he liked it too.

The memory made his chest ache. Something else that would be different now. Linhardt should have left the key or texted before coming over, but. He never had to let him know before. When Caspar would knock on his window at ten pm because he didn’t want to be at his house, he never called beforehand. They had perfected the art of the drop-in and it never annoyed anyone but who they were with. Linhardt had remembered someone in his cohort in college once making a face when they got to a restaurant and he said Caspar was joining them. Apparently, he had thought the two of them were on a date.

The door to the bathroom opened.

Caspar was toweling his hair, the rest of him naked. He knew he should look away, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen. Even before they started sleeping together, he had been familiar with his naked form.

All three cats reacted immediately. They began mewling at his feet, one of them weaving between his legs. Caspar lowered the towel.

“You can’t be hungry, I just--” The words died on his lips. “Lin.”

He didn’t sound angry. That was good. He wasn’t embarrassed either, to be caught naked, even if Linhardt had signed over privileges to see him naked and he really should avert his eyes out of that promise if nothing else.

“Your key,” he got out. “I thought you might want it back.”

“I still have yours,” Caspar said, voice catching. “So it’s only fair if you have mine.”

He seemed to notice his nudity, then, because he moved the towel down to cover his crotch. It didn’t do much since the rest of him was still exposed.

“Right. I.”

Why was he here? He had woken up from his mid-afternoon nap and seen the key. Without a thought, he had scooped it up and come over here. Like he had any right. Which he didn’t. Which he had given up, because they had dissolved. They had fallen apart.

He looked at Caspar’s body: at the scars at his chest, newer than the faded ones from his rowdy childhood that decorated his torso. The smoothness of his skin wet and flushed from the heat of the shower spray. Linhardt finally averted his gaze, more to punish himself.

“I’m kinda glad you came,” Caspar said.

He had been so angry. Tears streaming down his cheeks, burying his face in his hands, Linhardt not knowing how to comfort him or if he was even allowed to touch him. They never really fought beyond petty arguments, so that had been new.

“You are?” Linhardt toyed with a strand of his hair.

“Yeah. It’s weird. Going so many days without seeing you.”

That was true. The last time they had been separated like this was in the summer between fourth and fifth grade when Caspar was sent to Girl Scout camp for a full week. Linhardt had been inconsolable the entire time and had even run all the way down to his house when he saw the Von Bergliez’s car return, not caring that he would get sweaty and out of breath.

“I miss you,” Caspar continued. “Even though I don’t think I should.”

This was a conversation they shouldn’t be having when Caspar was naked and Linhardt had essentially broken into his house. He shouldn’t, no. Not after Linhardt broke up with him. The reasons had made sense at the time: things weren’t the same, they were drifting, he felt suffocated by his own emotions. But when Caspar had left and he was lying in the aftermath of what he had said, he knew it was all wrong. He couldn’t undo that, though. He couldn’t just tell Caspar the next day, “Just kidding.” He knew he was capable of many things, but he couldn’t do that.

“I miss you, too.”

It didn’t say everything he wanted to, but he was never good at those things. Every now and then he could get out a good line, but actual feelings were something he wasn’t used to wrestling with.

“Do you?”

He nodded.

Caspar eyed him in a way he had never done before: warily. He supposed that he deserved it. But Caspar said that he missed him. And he was still naked.

“Come out to a bar with me tonight,” Caspar said after a moment. His voice sounded strange and it took Linhardt a moment to realize that he was speaking carefully and blundering through a sentence like he usually did.

“Why?”

“Because I miss you. I dunno. I don’t want this to break us.”

He tried to say it simply, but Linhardt knew him too well. He had thought about this long and hard and Linhardt had given him the opportunity to say it.

“You aren’t even mad that I’m here?”

“I probably should be, but. I don’t like being mad at you. Even if…” Caspar shook his head. “I don’t know. Not talking to you, being mad at you...that’s all new to me.”

“It is to me, too.”

“And you used a key. You didn’t, like, break in.”

Caspar logic. He had missed it. Linhardt felt something in his chest ache.

“That is true...so you want to go to a bar?”

“Yeah. I dunno. Ashe suggested it. Going somewhere public and open to get used to being around each other again with the ‘new dynamic.’”

That sounded like Ashe. Always helping other people with their problems. Linhardt had always thought that he was too nosy, but he was Caspar’s closest friend after him and now his closest friend period.

“It makes sense,” Linhardt allowed.

One of the cats arched its back as it rubbed on Caspar’s calf. He reached down and scratched it behind the ears. The other two cats took this as a sign to crowd his hand as well. Linhardt stood there, watching and unsure what else to do.

Caspar stood again.

“Great, I’ll…” He looked down at the towel he held in one hand that only just covered his groin. “I should put clothes on, huh?”

Normally Linhardt would roll his eyes, but hearing Caspar’s lack of awareness just made something in him  _ lurch. _

“Yes. You should.”

\--

Maybe the bar was a mistake. It wasn’t either of the places they usually went. It wasn’t the gay bar that had been their haunt since freshmen year of college when the two of them would rub hand sanitizer on the backs of their hands to try and remove the black X’s on them. Where they had gone together for Linhardt’s birthday and too many people bought him shots and he nearly got undressed on the dance floor while Caspar tried to stop him, laughing all the while. It wasn’t the goth club, either, where they went with their friends and sat in low booths drinking chartreuse while they listened to music. It was in that bar where he had finally leaned over to kiss Caspar while Siouxsie sang about being spellbound.

All things considered, maybe it was best not to go to places where they had history.

The floor of the bar was sticky and there was neon in the windows. It flashed green through the windows mixing with the dismal, yellowed lighting of the bar that made Linhardt feel distinctly alien. He still wore the clothes he had napped in since he hadn’t bothered to do much except pull his hair back while he was on the train to Caspar’s. He had a t-shirt tucked into his joggers and an oversized cardigan.

Linhardt rolled his bottle of beer between his hands. Every now and then, he plucked at the corner of the label, but couldn’t bring himself to have the energy or drive to actually pull it off. He leaned against the bar miserably, not even caring that his elbow was in someone else’s sticky condensation. Caspar was over at the jukebox--an old, wood-paneled thing with tube lighting--flicking through the selections. He had been energetic at the bar, ordering for them both. But now he was gone.

Linhardt didn’t like it here, but he wasn’t going to leave. Before, he wouldn’t have had an issue. He would have said that he didn’t want to be wherever they were, leave and, usually, Caspar followed. Now he didn’t want to upset him. That Caspar had made the offer to hang out here was something he wasn’t going to take for granted.

He took a long pull from his bottle of beer and set it back on the bar. He was contributing to the problem of the nasty bar, to be sure. He wasn’t using a cocktail napkin. Linhardt had an aversion to coasters ever since all of their friends lived together back in college and Edelgard would insist that everyone use them.

He turned towards the jukebox to see if Caspar had finally made a choice and saw a few of the patrons had joined him. He couldn’t hear what they were saying over the music that was playing, but Caspar didn’t look happy. Linhardt eased himself off the bar. He never intervened when it came to fights. Never saw the use in getting involved in a fight or argument. But this felt a bit like old times. Caspar getting in over his head and Linhardt dragging him off.

One of the men nearest to Caspar said something and, whatever it was made Caspar haul off and take a swing at him. The man returned the hit, landing a punch squarely into Caspar’s chin. His head jerked back and he landed on the floor with a hard  _ thwack _ sound.

Linhardt was at his side immediately. Caspar got up, looking dazed. He tried to sit up but Linhardt’s hand held him in place.

“Fuck you, too,” he said and spat blood onto the floor.

Immediately, Linhardt felt queasy and lightheaded. He was never good with blood. Dimly, in the back of his head did the fact register:  _ Caspar is bleeding! _

The bartender swooped in before anyone else could react, yelling at them to get out. He didn’t mention anything about the man who actually landed the punch. For all Linhardt knew, he was a regular and a friend or some bullshit. Caspar got shakily to his feet. Linhardt grabbed his shoulders to steady him. They hadn’t negotiated how touching worked now, but he figured that circumstances being what they were, it didn’t matter.

Caspar shrugged him off.

“It’s fine. Lin. I’m.”

He thought that he was going to try to take another shot but instead he lurched towards the door. Linhardt followed him.

“Caspar!” he called. “What happened?”

Caspar took two steps out of the bar and fell to the ground of the parking lot. Gravel sprayed out around him as he crashed to the ground.

“Caspar!”

He bent near him and helped him up again. Caspar looked a bit dazed. Shit.

“What happened?”

“One of them said something about you I didn’t agree with. So I hit him.”

Those men had been talking about...him? Linhardt wasn’t sure what about him was any of their business, and clearly Caspar had thought that was well. The neon glowed over them both, adding to the surreality of this entire tableau.

“Me?”

“Yeah. Hey, you look pretty in this light…all green and beautiful. Like a hot alien.”

Linhardt didn’t have time to try and unpack that. Instead, he held his hand out.

“Give me your keys. I’m driving you to the emergency room. You might have a concussion.”

“You hate driving.”

“I don’t see why that matters right now.”

Caspar stared at him for a moment before rummaging in his pockets. He put the keys in Linhardt’s palm and, together, they made their way to the car.

\--

Linhardt’s hands shook as he directed the car towards the emergency room. Caspar lolled in the seat.

“Don’t fall asleep,” he told him. “Stay awake. Play some music.”

He fiddled with the radio knobs, but all that Caspar’s old car’s antenna could pick up was a garbled station that was possibly playing an old Pearl Jam song and an equally clear Latin station. The trumpets made his head hurt and so did the staticky wavering wail of “Better Man.”

“Here.”

Caspar pressed play and the music changed to Love and Rockets once the tape whirred to life. When he had found this particular cassette at the used book and record store near Linhardt’s apartment, they had, of course, been together. Caspar had thrust it up in the air with all the fanfare of Edison and the light bulb.

He tried to use Daniel Ash’s voice to calm his hands on the wheel, but he was too jittery. The night felt like it was pressing in on the windows. Pressing on him. Linhardt swallowed shakily.

Caspar sang in the passenger seat, voice offkey and charming as ever. He let that steady him as he drove, knowing it was a sign that he was still awake.

The emergency room wasn’t crowded when they arrived. Everything felt sped up and slowed down at once. Linhardt didn’t know what to do. Earlier he had woken up and acted on autopilot to come to Caspar’s house, keys in hand. Caspar naked and then. Caspar had said that he missed him. Missed him. Even though Linhardt broke his heart. He had wanted to spend time with him. And now they were in the emergency room.

When Caspar’s name was called, Linhardt had to stay in the waiting room. Only one other person was in the room, coughing a watery cough into their hand and not their arm. The fluorescent lights above him buzzed. He wanted to sleep, but his nerves were on edge.

If he were in his normal state of mind, he would think that this was emblematic of how he had felt since he and Caspar split, but his mind was firing too many ways at once to focus on any potential irony.

The time that passed he measured in coughs. He had left his phone in the car. Finally, Caspar walked out with an ice pack pressed to the back of his head and a bandage on his chin.

“No concussion,” he reported with a smile that was more like a wince.

He waited until he settled everything and they were walking back to the car. The keys jangled in Linhardt’s hand.

“I can drive.”

“You got hit in the head.”

That grin again, this time more genuine.

“My skull’s thicker than that.” He rapped his knuckles lightly on the side of his head.

“Don’t I know it.”

The banter almost felt natural. Almost felt like normal. But nothing about this was normal.

“C’mon. I know how you hate driving. And I’m fine.”

It wasn’t really convincing, but Linhardt handed the keys over.

“What did he say?” he asked.

“Who?”

Caspar paused. The heavy door to his car was open and he looked at Linhardt through the glass of the window.

“Oh!” he said after a moment.

He had a head injury so Linhardt couldn’t hold it against him.

“Yes. What did he say about me that made you hit him?”

Caspar shrugged, then, and said, “He called you something you weren’t.”

\--

Caspar came up with him to his apartment as if he was the one who had just been in the emergency room.

“I’m fine,” he said.

The day hadn’t gone how he thought it would. The night either. Linhardt had had no idea what he expected when he let himself into Caspar’s apartment earlier, but it wasn’t this.

“You just seem shaky. I’m worried.”

“Why?”

He said it before he could stop himself. Linhardt wrinkled his nose. That sounded disgustingly full of self pity. He had wallowed in it the first two days of their breakup until he could no longer stand himself. He didn’t want to do it again, especially after the surreality of their night.

Caspar studied his face, brow slightly drawn in. It was his face of concentration, like back in school when he didn’t quite get a homework assignment. Linhardt wanted to look away, but he didn’t.

“Just ‘cause we broke up doesn’t mean I can just...turn off being worried about you.”

He said it simply, because that was his nature. Linhardt’s own sentences and thoughts took weird and spiky turns but Caspar was direct. It was something he always loved about him. He swallowed.

“I think I’ll make some tea.”

Caspar cocked his head to the side slightly. “Okay. I’ll put on some music.”

He didn’t make any mention of leaving or going home. Linhardt wasn’t sure how to sort that. Instead, he busied himself with filling the electric kettle and plugging it in. He rummaged around in his tin of tea until he found a packet of ginger tea. Caspar loved it. Linhardt wasn’t as big of a fan. If he wanted tea, he wanted something that would help him sleep.

His apartment was more of a loft without being advertised as a loft apartment. Everything was in one room and, truthfully, mostly dominated by his bed. The turntable was next to it and Caspar messed with it with practiced ease. Today was a day marked by music. The shower, the bar, the car, and now his apartment. The haunting, music box sounds of “Lorelei” came on. The Cocteau Twins. And Caspar wasn’t even teasing him. He didn’t have to do this. He was too good.

Linhardt remembered again when he lay on his bed, in the gray haze between being asleep and awake (a haze he was so familiar with), and how he wished he could take it back. How his brain spun itself dizzy thinking about the possibility. He ended up settling on the fact that if he had called off the break up the next day, he feared it would sow seeds of distrust. Caspar had seen him bust them up over his own swirling, disjointed thoughts, and would be forever afraid he would break up with him again only to take it back in an endless back and forth. Thinking about it now, it was dumb, but. Linhardt had never been good at making his own bed. Only lying in it.

He got down two mugs from the cupboard and placed the tea bags in it. He didn’t know why he was having ginger tea, too, but his hands were still shaking and he didn’t want to sort out other flavors he had.

Caspar returned to the linoleum square that constituted the transition to his kitchen and leaned against the counter.

“Lin.”

The song played on, the music trickling through his apartment. Linhardt wrapped his cardigan sleeves around himself and stared back at him.

“I didn’t mean it,” he said.

“Mean what?”

Caspar turned his head slightly from side to side as if he could physically look for what part of the conversation he missed.

“Any of what I said.”

The kettle whistled and Linhardt turned to unplug it. He knew Caspar was staring at his back as he poured the hot water into the waiting mugs.

“When I broke up with you,” he began. Linhardt looked down, concentrating on the way the tea was changing the water rather than turning around. “I didn’t mean it. I was having a freak out and got in my head.”

Thinking and overthinking. Why his academic advisors always had to pare down his writing, tell him to focus and have a clear thesis statement. His brain jumped and left or focused for too long until everything he was reading or thinking about began to spin.

“You didn’t mean to break up with me?”

“No. Yes. I mean, when I said that, I meant it, but I didn’t want it. It was wrong. I was wrong.”

He heard Caspar give a slight chuckle.

“Wow, admitting you’re wrong. Okay. Okay…”

“Lorelai” faded and “Beatrix” began and Linhardt began stirring the tea. He thought about Caspar sprawled in the gravel of the parking lot. Him walking out of the shower to look at him, not angry.

He stirred the tea with purpose, some of it sloshing over the side. Linhardt looked at the spots of warm wetness on his sleeve and thought, dimly, that it might stain. He didn’t know Caspar had come behind him until he reached out to put his hand over his, stilling it.

“I was wrong,” he said again. “I wanted to take it back right away, but I thought it might make things worse and now…”

“We’re broken?”

Caspar’s face was too close to his. He still smelled like the emergency room, but he didn’t push him away. Linhardt swallowed again.

“Are we?”

“I don’t think we ever can be. Y’know?”

He wanted that to be true. So badly, he did. He wanted to know what he had done wasn’t irreversible.

“I still love you,” Caspar said. “You know that, right?”

Did he? He did. The way his face was surprised and then how it softened when he saw Linhardt in his living room. Taking Ashe’s advice and making the first step. Linhardt turned his face slightly and their lips nearly touched. Caspar put his other hand out to place on his hip. The other still rested over top of Linhardt’s.

“I--yes.”

“And…”

His face was pleading. Beautiful. Linhardt blinked. They were so close that the edges of his eyelashes brushed down Caspar’s cheek.

“I think it was obvious,” he said. “Of course I still love you.”

“Okay. Okay.”

Caspar kissed him and he sank into it. He thought they would never have this again, but here they were. Linhardt didn’t know what morning would bring, what further conversations they would have, but in the surreality of tonight, this was perfect. This was enough.

Behind them, the record skipped, but kept playing.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: smugsnail/smugsnailcos


End file.
